Reply #28: Likely terrorist delivery methods for delivering a nuclear device would be [View All]

(a) assembly within the US from components either smuggled in or obtained within the U.S. and delivered literally as a car bomb. (The most likely user of a terrorist-built device, by the way, would be a domestic terrorist, for this reason.)

(b) on a ship bound for an American port. Even setting it off outside our 12-mile territorial waters would do damage from blast, heat, and radioactive steam fallout. If you could somehow sneak it up the Chesapeake or toward Manhattan, it would be devastating.

(c) an airplane, a-la 9/11. Least likely, but if it could be pulled off, the deadliest. (Air bursts do the most damage, including EMP.)

Missiles are extremely unlikely, even impossible, as terrorist delivery devices.